Women 'meant no disrespect' with offensive pose at Arlington

Two Massachusetts women are expressing remorse Wednesday after a photo of one of the women making an obscene gesture at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery caused an uproar.

"It was just a spur of the moment, total lapse of judgment," said Lindsey Stone's father, Peter Stone.

The father of Lindsey Stone called the photo of her "disgraceful," but he wants everyone to know his daughter meant no disrespect.

"She wasn't reacting to the place; she was reacting to the sign and she apologizes to everybody," he said.

The photo, taken during a work trip in October, shows Stone giving the middle finger to a sign that sits next to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. The sign reads, "Silence and Respect."

It has touched off an Internet firestorm -- one group on Facebook calling for Stone to be fired.

"It's not at all what she intended to put out there," Peter Stone said.

Stone and the woman who took the photo, Jamie Schuh, released a statement Tuesday night saying, "We sincerely apologize for all the pain we have caused. It was meant merely as a visual pun, intending to depict the exact opposite of what the sign said. We realize it was in incredibly poor taste and are deeply sorry."

Stone and Schuh have been placed on unpaid leave from their jobs at Living Independently Forever, Inc., or LIFE, a Hyannis organization that helps adults with disabilities on Cape Cod.

"We're very, very upset about it. We really, really find it despicable behavior," said Jim Godsil, chief financial officer of LIFE.

He said Stone and Schuh could lose their jobs.

"We have codes of conduct in terms of how we expect our employees to act, and this could potentially be in violation of that," Godsil said.

Almost 1,700 people posted comments on LIFE's Facebook page protesting the photo, in which Stone pretends to yell while showing her middle finger.

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